The 17th FAIR "EXPERIMENTA" of Physics and Technology was held on Sunday 10th of April with many awards and a general applause of participants and visitors.
As announced, the groups participating in the 17th Experimenta fair-contest began arriving at the museum at 9 a.m. to prepare a total of 68 projects accepted at the exhibition sites, with the help of the collaborating staff, around 70 students from the Faculty of Physics. It should be remembered that this year 57% of the participating students were women, and this fact could be seen walking around the fair.
At 10 a.m., when the fair opened to the public, the main street of the Science Museum of Valencia was already flooded with a sea of blue t-shirts with the blue "Experimenta" logo. The young participants explained their projects non-stop to all the visitors, as well as to the 33 members of the jury who passed through their seats to decide the prizes in each category. At the same time, the children's workshop Fisicalandia began, with four thematic tables differentiated by age: opening flower (or spider), cartesian play, terrestrial magnetism and plasticine circuits.)
The estimated number of visitors, both from the organisers and the museum itself, was around 2,500 people over the three hours of the fair.
At 1 p.m., when the siren sounded to announce the end of the event, the audience applauded enthusiastically. Everyone quickly collected their projects to go to the prize-giving ceremony in the museum's Santiago Grisolía Auditorium.
The event began at 1.30 p.m. with the short scientific show "Primary Colours" by the group of physics students and members of the Photonets group, Adrián Cabrera, Roser Forment, Nadia Ghadban and Josu Sánchez.
At the table of institutional representatives who awarded the prizes and diplomas were José López Escribano, member of the Associació professorat de Tecnologia de la Comunitat Valenciana (APTCV) and advisor of CEFIRE CTEM, Elena Pinilla Cienfuegos, vice-president of the Real Sociedad Española de Física and member of the Divisió d'Ensenyament de la Física, Nuria Rius Dionis, director of the Institut de Física Corpuscular (IFIC) centre mixt CSIC-UV, Myriam Atienza Fernández, director of contents of the Museu de la Ciència, Jordi Vidal Perona, dean of the Faculty of Physics of the Universitat de València, Antonio Torres Salvador, general director of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, and Mª Isabel Vázquez Navarro, Vice-principal of Studies of the Universitat de València, who chaired the event.
Last minute problems have prevented the already confirmed attendance of the Autonomous Secretary of Education and Vocational Training, Miguel Soler, and the Second Vice-President of the Government and Minister of Employment and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, who sent a video message to all the participants. This was followed by speeches of welcome to the CAC from its Director General and congratulations from the Vice-Rector for Studies at the Universitat de València to all the participating groups.
After recognising the international participation of various groups from Latvia, Belgium, Italy and Portugal, members of the Erasmus+ network "Science is all around", the award-winning projects were made public. The coordinator of the fair, Chantal Ferrer Roca, and host of the event, named the projects with honours and awards in the different categories of projects assessed by the juries, as well as the public awards, based on the 4455 votes cast throughout the morning. The winning pupils and their teachers took to the stage and received their awards and prizes.
At 14.30 the event ended, reminding that on 28th May, all the projects that have been classified in the Experimenta fair-competition will be exhibited in "Experimenta TOP", as part of the Expociència day organised by the Science Park of the Universitat de València. There they will record videos of the awarded students explaining their projects, which will be published openly to disseminate their work.
The Fair-Contest Exprimenta is organised by the Faculty of Physics of the Universitat de València with the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology - Ministry of Science and Innovation and other entities.
HERE Preliminary images of the Fair
All the information for participants and public is at:
